Kitchen Adventures

Okay, here are some pics to prove that I've actually been working on the house.

To be honest, I can't believe how slow this kitchen has taken. True, we had the attic (still unfinished) to work on as well as various other tasks, but it just seems to have taken so long. Perhaps I've just been procrastinating too much.

Hopefully, when I post again, there will be significant, noticeable changes.

Right after the New Year I put up some dust barriers (more on that later).

While installing the one in the dining room I noticed a new, bulging, crack in the little wall. This is that little wall that has the sewer pipe on the other side of it.

If you look in the pic you can barely see the crack. I pulled a small part of the wallpaper off to get a better view of the bulge.

So, I got to thinking.... this little wall must be starting to sag. The next pic will explain why.

Do you see the floor joist running left to right towards the top of the pic? Notice the jagged flooring to the top of it?

This is the extent of the termite damage. Basically, the floor that the little wall is on is not being supported!

I knew I would need to shore this up, but I had no idea that this little wall would start to sag this fast!

Now I have to do some major moving around of items being stored in the basement just to get to this spot.

We started this cleaning out process over two weeks ago and still are not done.

Yes, we have a lot of junk, but not THAT much!! What we are doing is sorting through stuff and getting rid of several items.

I would post pics of this mess, but I do not want to scare you that much!!

The next two pics are showing one of the frustrating things in the kitchen along with MY favorite cat Brutus.

Brutus is a stray he adopted us a little more than a year ago. However, he didn't start living in the house until last June.

Is a big ol' Tomcat who will beat the living snot out of any cat that does not belong here. However, two of the cats do not like him and beat up on him. Instead of fighting back he just lets them do it. I think he is afraid of being thrown out if he rocks the boat.

This is Brutus' favorite spot. During the day, if I'm not working in the kitchen, he is laying on the top of the half wall sunning.

Now for the frustrating part.

Do you see the wood propped up against the side of the half-wall? That's the top of it.

Last week I started to do some sanding on it to take out all the bumps and waves. Nothing I was doing would work, they just seemed to get worse. So, I decided to get out my hand plane and level the thing. Next thing I knew chunks of wood were popping off with each scrape!!!!

Okay, if it is going to fight back I will bring out the big guns. I'll just pop it off and run it through a thickness planer. While removing it the edges started to splinter bad. Eventually the side molding came off and the reasons for all the trouble became obvious - the top was made out of plywood!!!!

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Go figure - they POs used plywood to save cost of a solid wood top. So now I will have to replace it. Luckily, I have a source for old, aged wood, so it won't be so bad.

I guess I should have expected something like this - especially when I found out the built-in cabinet has plywood sides. Now we are reconsidering what to do with that cabinet. More than likely we will rebuild it using vintage, solid wood. We'll just have to see. Might hold off on this until we build new cabinets.
























I also had a chance to creat a more accurate blueprint of the kitchen.

The doorway at the top right (left side) leads to the dining room. The other one leads to the utility porch.

The doorway at the lower right leads to the foyer. The two doors at the bottom left leads to the basment (left hand door) and the powder room (right hand door).

The built in hutch is the squarish thing between the bottom doors.

The last two pics are of one of three dust barriers we installed.

After getting the house clean, we just could not bare to let it get covered in sawdust again.










There was a piece of plastic covering the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, but it just wasn't working as well as I wanted.

I found these things at the local DIY store. They are peel-n-stick zippers. You use them once and then throw away.

Instead of doing that, we will just cut them off the plastic and use double sided sticky tape and re-mount them when we use them again.

When zipped up, they make a great barrier. I can also leave the bottom part partially unzipped so that the animals can come and go.

There's Izzy - she is inspecting the device to make sure it was installed properly.